I tend to have two thrusts in my architectural photography. The first is of whole structure shots I've done all sorts of goofy things to get good shots of buildings. My 24mm f/2.8 lens, which I didn't purchase for this purpose, often lets me photograph a shorter building in its entirety from the ground. Sometimes just a little bit of tilt will add a minimal amount of distortion to the structure, but capture all of it. I've also done odd things such as parking my truck in front of a structure, and climbing on top of it. In combination with the 24mm, the additional elevation can be enough so that I can capture the building without any perspective distortion. However, what I'd really like is a PC or Perspective Correction lens for photos such as these. I'm really looking forward to finding one of these elusive lenses to join my other Pentax gear.
The other direction of my architectural work is of detail on the buildings. I find that my 70-210 f/4 zoom lens works extremely well for this purpose. It lets me frame and get close to many details on buildings, whether they be 12 feet or 40 feet of the ground. In addition to the accessibility problem which is solved by longer lenses, there is another unique problem with this type of photography... The sun on bright days, combined with the shadow from building overhangs, can create quite a lot of contrast in the scene! Recently I've come to the realization that I might be able to use fill flash to decrease the contrast in some of these photos. Use of my Fresnel tele-extender for my flash units could make this quite viable! I'll need to try it and see what happens.
So far I've done a bunch of experiments on the moon. I've been using the earlier mentioned SMCP-A 70-210 f/4 zoom and my SMCP-A 2x Teleconverter. Laugh all you want, this is an excellent lens combination that I have used for many things. At f/8 effective it is a bit slow, but is quite sharp. After the experiments, my big astro-photography target was the January, 2000 Lunar eclipse. I also have a roll of Kodak Portra 160NC of the January, 2000 Lunar eclipse. I was using the Portra because it was the only film that I had at the moment that was out of the freezer and thawed. I thought that the results wouldn't be too great. However, the results were pretty darn good. JohnW and other people pointed out to me that Portra may have been an excellent film to use because of its suitability to high-contrast photography; think white wedding dress and black tux. Last photo was a 30 second exposure of Orion during the totality of the eclipse; the sky was beautifully dark then, and there were some nice star trails from the unguided exposure.
For a long time I was thinking seriously of getting a telecope to shoot the moon with. I am interested in astronomy, so that isn't a huge loss. However, telescopes have a lot of setup and problems to deal with. That could lead me to a path where I am frustrated with spending a good chunk of money on something that doesn't work well. Currently, I'm thinking of getting a 1000mm f/11 reflex (mirror) lens for my camera. That, combined with a 2x or 1.4x tele-converter will result in a full-field moon or better. It is also a lens that I can use in non-astronomic settings.
I'm still thinking on this one, but I believe it would be a useful tool; both to shoot the moon with, and to be able to reach out with on the ground. I also wish I had a spot-meter (for this and other things) so I could get a better idea of the reflected light reading.
I've also taken some unguided photos of constellations, Orion in particular. Some day I'd like to photograph stellar phenomena such as the Orion Nebula, but that does require a telescope! I've often thought about getting an equatorial mount to put my camera on. Then I'd be set for a telescope ... one of these years.
As a result, most of my landscape work has been when I've been driving places. If I'm lucky to have enough time, or determined to make the time, to record the beauty I've discovered, then I do. I've been meaning for several years now to try and record the colors of the fall foliage in Wisconsin. It never seems to work that well for me, either the terrain isn't beautiful enough when I find trees that are, or there is no place to stop and photograph when the combination does exist!
I drove out west, round trip to Seattle, WA, a few years ago, back in 1997. I didn't have a camera with me; this was before I purchased my SLR and I didn't think of borrowing any equipment. Of course I saw the most amazing and beautiful sights imaginable, just aching to be recorded on film. I hope to take a sight-seeing trip out west one of these days so that I could try my hand at the grand landscape, instead of just looking in wonder at the scenery as I drive past.
Looking at the earlier paragraphs in this section, I don't see any mention of equipment. I think a great deal of that is because landscape photos can use (and use up) almost any piece of equipment you can purchase. The widest of wide angles for those sweeping vistas. The longest of telephotos for isolating that beauty that you can not get near. The fastest of ordinary lenses to record things in low light. I will mention, though, that I often find myself in situations where I can not get close enough to the landscape that I want to photograph. I think that a longer (400mm), reasonably fast (f/2.8 or f/4.0) prime lens would be wonderful for things such as those.
Having said all of that, people is what life is all about, and so I am trying something new for me ... people photography. I've started off in this endeavor by combining people photography with some of my normal style of work. I started this all when I was photographing at my sister Victoria's wedding on December 9, 2000. Congratulations, Vicky! I started out with doing some architectural work in the church, recording the interior, the patterns of the stained glass windows, the woodwork, and other architectural details. About this point in time I realized that a wedding was all about people, and that the building that it was in was just a frame for the ceremony going on inside. So, I started photographing people standing in and around the church. Usually it was quite obvious that I was photographing people and they "posed" for it. However, I managed to sneak a few candids of people too!
Later, at the reception, I used my 70-210 f/4 zoom and my flash to run around taking candid photos of the family members and guests. I found this quite challenging because it was quite difficult to get natural photos of people! All too often, as soon as a person saw my camera pointed at them they would no longer look natural, and "pose" instead. Or worse they would look unhappy that I was photographing them. This problem was exacerbated by my slow focusing and framing. Often something that started out as a candid would turn into something else. The mid-range 70-210 zoom worked quite well for this task. It let you cut out individuals and small groups from the crowd, so that it was possible to have distinct subjects in the photos, rather than just people milling around. The longer focal length also allowed me to be far enough away from my subjects that I didn't intrude upon them and break the spontaneity ... most of the time.
Equipment wise, I think that two pieces of equipment would be wonderful for random people photography. The first is an auto-focus camera body and lenses; Without this, I think that getting good candids is difficult. The other thing that I would like is an improved lighting setup. One thing would be a dual-head flash with one head for bounce, and an smaller second head for frontal fill. A substitute for this could be a diffuser for my current flash, but I think that I would also need a stronger flash too. The other thing would be an off-axis mount for the flash to get it farther away from the lens. This would reduce red-eye a bit (I'm lucky, only got it once or twice) an drive the shadows down towards the floor, rather than projecting them onto the walls.
I'll note that bouncing my AF280T off the low ceiling worked fairly well. In many cases it managed to ack as a pseudo hair light, illuminating the subject's hair to make it stand out from the background.
So, I started simply. When I visited my family at Christmas 2000, I made a simple portraiture lighting setup. The lit Christmas tree was the background. I used my tripod to put one of my flashes off-camera at about 45 degrees stage right of the camera and at maximum (8 foot) extension. This main light was aimed at the person's face. I mounted my camera on a borrowed second tripod in front of the subject. Then I hand-held a second flash, less powerful and with a diffuser mounted, a bit to stage left of the camera. This second fill flash was about 3-4 feet of the floor, and about at a 20-30 degree angle from the camera. It was intended to fill the shadows (chin, nose) created by the downward pointing main flash. Both flashes were connected via the Pentax off-camera TTL cords, and the exposure was done with TTL flash metering.
The results of all of this were OK, but not spectacular. The main light worked pretty well to bring out texture in people's faces instead of leaving them bland. However, the fill light didn't do a good job. One problem was that it was too low, and didn't eliminate the shadow that a subject's head cast on their left shoulder. This wasn't too noticeable with a dark clothed subject, but was quite obvious with lighter clothing. Another problem was that the hand-held fill light moved from exposure to exposure, so it's effects kept on changing.
I've picked up a book on photographic lighting so I can see what I should be doing. I'm also going to get a lighting stand and some diffusers for my flashes to soften the light. Perhaps some reflectors too to create tinted high-lights, and to introduce light from below to fill hollows.
Some people on the pdml suggested that I'd be more interested in a 20mm lens to take photographs of railroad equipment with. After using the 24mm for a bit, I think that may have had a good point. However, I use my 24mm often enough that I think it was a good acquisition none the less. Recently I realized that Trains and Buildings share a common trait; they are small in one or two dimensions, and rather long in another. In other words, a PC lens might be just the thing to help me photograph railroad equipment with! Sometimes I need all the rationalization I can get!